CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
All three adults in the room twisted around in unison to look at the door. It was open - had been opened without their taking notice - and Margery stood on the threshold, her head cocked slightly to one side. Her hand was still resting on the door. "What's wrong?"
Matilda gave a cry, springing up from her chair and rushing to her daughter.
She pulled Margery into her arms, so tightly that Constance was surprised Margery was still able to breathe.
She could see her niece's face over Matilda's shoulder, but her expression betrayed nothing: she looked, if anything, faintly startled.
Constance couldn't think of the last time she'd seen Matilda embrace any of her children like this; once they were no longer babes in arms, she was stern with them.
Now, though, she was clinging to Margery as if she would never let go.
Beside Constance, Richard was openly gawping.
"Where have you been?" Matilda drew back just far enough to take Margery by the shoulders and shake her.
"We've all been worried near to death! I thought you left because we quarreled -" Her voice wavered, and if Constance had not already been in a thorough state of shock, that would have done it.
"That you were angry with me and had run away -"
Margery stared at her mother, her mouth slightly open. "You thought I ran away - because of you - because I was angry?"
"I thought you dead!" Matilda shook her again. "Or as good as, if some harm came to you and we could not find you! What were you thinking? Of all the selfish, careless -"
"Matilda," Constance said, and her sister fell silent.
This was a minor miracle in itself, but Constance had no time to contemplate it.
She stood, pulling Matilda's hands gently from Margery's shoulders and inserting herself between the two before the conversation could devolve further.
"We have all been badly frightened," she said to Margery, whose expression was near a mirror of her father's.
"Where did you go, and why did you tell no one?
When your mother found your bed empty, she thought you had slipped away in the night. "
"Well, I didn't." Margery pulled herself upright, a frown appearing between her eyebrows. "I went out this morning, before anyone else was up. I didn't slip. I just didn't tell anyone, is all."
"It's as good as," Matilda said from behind Constance. "We thought - I thought -"
"It was wrong of you to go without saying anything," Constance said over Matilda. "How were we to know where you'd gone, or when you would come back? And where did you go?"
Margery shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, looking down. "I . . . went to market. And then I went walking awhile." She glanced up, her gaze flicking from Constance to her mother and then back. "I had to stay out awhile, on account of - where is Simon?"
"What?" The conversation had pivoted so abruptly, it left Constance's head spinning. "What do you mean, where is - he's out looking for you. Your father sent him out - what, an hour ago?" She glanced at Richard, who nodded. "What has Simon to do with this?"
"Because I had to go on his account," Margery said. There was a gleam in her eye and it took Constance a moment to identify it: it was pride. She was proud of - herself? "So he could come after me. He offered to go, didn't he? And he's not yet returned?"
"Margery," Matilda snapped. Constance couldn't entirely blame her; Margery was talking in circles. "Will you speak sense? Of course he's not returned yet, do you see him here? Why do you ask after him anyway, when you've scorned him so often before?"
The gleam in Margery's eyes shone even brighter.
A smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth.
"Because he asked me to go. So he could go after me.
He couldn't think how to get away otherwise, and he needed to, to go and find Nelly and take her to St. Martin's.
They're there now, most likely, but there's no use in going after them.
The priest said he'd meet them by noon, and it's a half-hour past, now.
" She tilted her chin upwards, smiling openly now.
It was pride on her face, Constance was certain - pride, and a child's delight at managing a successful trick. "They're married now, or about to be."
Every adult in the room was silent, staring at her.
Constance glanced over her shoulder to see Matilda looking thunderstruck, and Richard not far behind her.
If she could see her own face, she suspected her expression would be twin to theirs'.
The thought of Simon - dull, stolid, obedient Simon - concocting a plan to run off and marry a hawker's daughter behind his master's back was almost beyond imagining.
And with Nelly, who had smiled at Margery when Constance took her to market?
She had only formed a faint impression of the girl, but she had seemed quiet, almost sullen.
No one she might have imagined absconding with a runaway apprentice.
Richard was the first to recover his voice.
"He asked you to do this?" His tone was bewildered, but Constance could hear it tilting towards anger.
"To help him break his apprenticeship and run off with this - this -" Words failed him once again.
Likely he could find no way to describe Nelly because he had never seen her.
Constance doubted very much that she had met either Richard or Matilda.
"To disobey me? After all these years under our roof, having the benefit of training and good counsel from me? What was he thinking?"
"He had to," Margery explained. "He knew you intended him for me, and he didn't believe you would change your mind.
Either of you," she added, looking at Matilda.
"And it had to be now on account of Nelly hasn't any money since her father died - she was turned out of her lodgings, and she's been sleeping in ditches for near six months now.
She told Simon and I that she'd have to set out on the high road to find work in some other town, or else sell herself.
Simon wanted to marry her after he was finished his apprenticeship and you couldn't force me on him, but there wasn't time. So they decided to run away instead."
Richard spluttered, his face reddening. "Is the boy simple? Does he not know what becomes of apprentices who flee from their masters? I could bring him before the court on charges of robbery -"
"He was going to come back," Margery said.
"Once they were married, he meant to come back and finish his apprenticeship, only then you wouldn't be able to make him marry me, and she wouldn't run away.
He thought she might live here, with him.
And once the apprenticeship was done, he could find lodgings for them both. "
It was a child's plan, Constance thought, made with all the enthusiasm and inexperience and impatience of a child.
Apprentices could not marry without their master's permission - but if the wedding took place before Richard and Matilda knew of it, there was little they could do besides petitioning for an annulment.
How Simon had imagined he would simply move Nelly into the household with him, she did not know - but she did know that, faced with the loss of his beloved, he would undoubtedly be driven to any number of rash actions to keep her.
She would do the same, if it were Isabel.
Would have done the same, if she'd had the chance.
"I will not have her in this house," Richard stormed.
"No more so will I have him back. To keep one liar under my roof is foolish enough, but two?
When both have shown their ingratitude, and their vanity?
Let them both be turned out on the high road, and see how they fend for themselves. I'll have none of them."
Margery's head jerked up in alarm. "But they'll starve!"
"They might have considered that beforehand!" he snapped. "If he finds the demands of his apprenticeship too onerous, then let him be free of it. Of all the simple-minded -"
"Richard," Matilda said. "Enough." Her tone was enough to stop her husband in his tracks; he fairly deflated before Constance's eyes.
She had never before thought to wonder how her sister and Richard managed their disagreements.
Until today, she had thought Richard too mild-mannered to disagree with anyone.
But now it seemed that what she had taken for good temper owed itself rather to a prior lack of sufficient provocation.
Either way, he was as quick to subside as he had been to flare up, once Matilda took the situation in hand.
"That boy has lived under our roof these ten years," Matilda went on, "and we have had the raising of him.
If you think I will let a child in my household be turned out to fend for himself with no hope of shelter, you had best think again.
Simon is ours' as much as Margery is, and I will not see him harmed.
" She turned back to her daughter. "All three of you have conducted yourself foolishly in this, but what's done is done, and I am not prideful enough to think I may undo a marriage sanctified in the church.
As to what comes next, that will be discussed within these walls.
Do Simon and Nelly intend on returning here today? "
"I - think so," Margery managed. She was staring at her mother in open shock. "They meant to come and tell you they were wed - this afternoon, I think. After -" She stopped suddenly, flushing pink. "After the marriage was, um. Consummated."